Poetry 180 A poem a day for high school students provided by former Poet Laureate Billy Collins.
Read a poem aloud @ a National poetry month Function ft exchange.
Post a poem in a conspicuous place
Post a poem to the Wiki space.
Write an original poem of your own.
Create a poetry book including ten poems or more.
Create and send a poetry greeting card to celebrate National Poetry Month.
Podcast a poem
Submit a poem for publication
Add a poem to the poet's tree
- A division of a poem created by arranging the lines into a unit, often repeated in the same pattern of
meter and rhyme throughout the poem; a unit of poetic lines (a “paragraph” within the poem). The
stanzas within a poem are separated by blank lines.
Stanzas in modern poetry, such as free verse, often do not have lines that are all of the same length and
meter, nor even the same number of lines in each stanza. Stanzas created by such irregular line groupings
are often dictated by meaning, as in paragraphs of prose.
Line The line is fundamental to the perception of poetry, marking an important visual distinction from
prose. Poetry is arranged into a series of units that do not necessarily correspond to sentences, but
rather to a series of metrical feet. Generally, but not always, the line is printed as one single line on the
page. If it occupies more than one line, its remainder is usually indented to indicate that it is a continuation.
There is a natural tendency when reading poetry to pause at the end of a line, but the careful reader will
follow the punctuation to find where natural pauses should occur.
In traditional verse forms, the length of each line is determined by convention, but in modern poetry
the poet has more latitude for choice.
Couplet
Point of view/Voice: The author’s point of view concentrates on the vantage point of the speaker, or “teller” of
the story or poem. This may be considered the poem’s “voice” — the pervasive presence behind the
overall work. This is also sometimes referred to as the persona.
• 1st Person: the speaker is a character in the story or poem and tells it from his/her
perspective (uses “I”).
• 3rd Person limited: the speaker is not part of the story, but tells about the other characters
through the limited perceptions of one other person.
• 3rd Person omniscient: the speaker is not part of the story, but is able to “know” and
describe what all characters are thinking.
Line: The line is fundamental to the perception of poetry,
Meter
Free Vese: Lines with no prescribed pattern or structure — the poet determines all the variables
as seems appropriate for each poem
Onomatopoeia
Imagery: The use of vivid language to generate ideas and/or evoke mental images, not only of the visual
sense, but of sensation and emotion as well. While most commonly used in reference to figurative
language, imagery can apply to any component of a poem that evoke sensory experience and emotional
response, and also applies to the concrete things so brought to mind.
Poetry works it magic by the way it uses words to evoke “images” that carry depths of meaning.
The poet’s carefully described impressions of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch can be transferred to
the thoughtful reader through imaginative use and combinations of diction. In addition to its more
tangible initial impact, effective imagery has the potential to tap the inner wisdom of the reader to
arouse meditative and inspirational responses.
Related images are often clustered or scattered throughout a work, thus serving to create a particular
mood or tone. Images of disease, corruption, and death, for example, are recurrent patterns shaping our
perceptions of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Examples:
• Sight: Smoke mysteriously puffed out from the clown’s ears.
• Sound: Tom placed his ear tightly against the wall; he could hear a faint but distinct thump
thump thump.
• Touch: The burlap wall covering scraped against the little boy’s cheek.
• Taste: A salty tear ran across onto her lips.
• Smell: Cinnamon! That’s what wafted into his nostrils.
Consonance: Repeated consonant sounds at the ending of words placed near each other, usually on the
same or adjacent lines. These should be in sounds that are accented, or stressed, rather than in vowel
–2–
sounds that are unaccented. This produces a pleasing kind of near-rhyme.
Example: boats into the past
Example: cool soul
Assonance: Repeated vowel sounds in words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent lines.
These should be in sounds that are accented, or stressed, rather than in vowel sounds that are unaccented.
Example: He’s a bruisin’ loser
In the second example above, the short A sound in Andrew, patted, and Ascot would be assonant.
Rhyme: This is the one device most commonly associated with poetry by the general public. Words that
have different beginning sounds but whose endings sound alike, including the final vowel sound and
everything following it, are said to rhyme.
Example: time, slime, mime
Double rhymes include the final two syllables. Example: revival, arrival, survival
Triple rhymes include the final three syllables. Example: greenery, machinery, scenery
A variation which has been used effectively is called slant rhyme, or half rhyme. If only the final
consonant sounds of the words are the same, but the initial consonants and the vowel sounds are
different, then the rhyme is called a slant rhyme or half rhyme. When this appears in the middle of lines
rather than at the end, it is called consonance.
Example: soul, oil, foul; taut, sat, knit
Another variation which is occasionally used is called near rhyme. If the final vowel sounds are the
–3–
same, but the final consonant sounds are slightly different, then the rhyme is called a near rhyme.
Example: fine, rhyme; poem, goin’
Less effective but sometimes used are sight rhymes. Words which are spelled the same (as if they
rhymed), but are pronounced differently are called sight rhymes or eye rhymes.
Example: enough, cough, through, bough
Rhye Scheme The pattern established by the arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or poem, generally
described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines, such as the
ababbcc of the Rhyme Royal stanza form.
Capital letters in the alphabetic rhyme scheme are used for the repeating lines of a refrain; the letters
x and y indicate unrhymed lines.
In quatrains, the popular rhyme scheme of abab is called alternate rhyme or cross rhyme. The abba
scheme is called envelope rhyme, and another one frequently used is xaxa (This last pattern, when
working with students, is generally easier for them to understand when presented as abcb, as they
associate matched letters with rhymed words).
Repetition: The purposeful re-use of words and phrases for an effect. Sometimes, especially with longer
phrases that contain a different key word each time, this is called parallelism. It has been a central part
of poetry in many cultures. Many of the Psalms use this device as one of their unifying elements.
Example: I was glad; so very, very glad.
Example: Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward…
…
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d…
Alliteration: Repeated consonant sounds at the beginning of words placed near each other, usually on the
same or adjacent lines. A somewhat looser definition is that it is the use of the same consonant in any
part of adjacent words.
Example: fast and furious
Example: Peter and Andrew patted the pony at Ascot
Metaphor: A direct comparison between two unlike things, stating that one is the other or does the action
of the other.
Example: He’s a zero. Example: Her fingers danced across the keyboard.
Simile
Personification: Attributing human characteristics to an inanimate object, animal, or abstract idea.
Example: The days crept by slowly, sorrowfully.
Tone: The means by which a poet reveals attitudes and feelings, in the style of language or expression
of thought used to develop the subject. Certain tones include not only irony and satire, but may be
loving, condescending, bitter, pitying, fanciful, solemn, and a host of other emotions and attitudes.
Tone can also refer to the overall mood of the poem itself, in the sense of a pervading atmosphere
intended to influence the readers’ emotional response and foster expectations of the conclusion.
Another use of tone is in reference to pitch or to the demeanor of a speaker as interpreted through
inflections of the voice; in poetry, this is conveyed through the use of connotation, diction, figures of
speech, rhythm and other elements of poetic construction.
Synesthesia: An attempt to fuse different senses by describing one kind of sense impression in words
normally used to describe another.
Example: The sound of her voice was sweet.
Example: a loud aroma, a velvety smile
Elegy
Epiphany
Limerick
Ode: any of several stanzaic forms more complex than the lyric, with intricate rhyme schemes and
irregular number of lines, generally of considerable length, always written in a style marked by a
rich, intense expression of an elevated thought praising a person or object. “Ode to a Nightingale”
is an example.
Sonnet: a fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter with a prescribed rhyme scheme; its subject
was traditionally love. Three variations are found frequently in English, although others are
occasionally seen.
• Shakespearean Sonnet: a style of sonnet used by Shakespeare with a rhyme scheme of abab
cdcd efef gg
• Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet: a form of sonnet made popular by Petrarch with a rhyme scheme of
abbaabba cdecde or cdcdcd
• Spenserian Sonnet: a variant of the Shakespearean form in which the quatrains are linked with a
chain or interlocked rhyme scheme, abab bcbc cdcd ee.
• Sonnet Sequence: a series of sonnets in which there is a discernable unifying theme, while each
retains its own structural independence. All of Shakespeare’s sonnets, for example, were part of a
sequence.
Read a poem aloud @ a National poetry month Function
ft exchange.
Post a poem in a conspicuous place
Post a poem to the Wiki space.
Write an original poem of your own.
Create a poetry book including ten poems or more.
Create and send a poetry greeting card to celebrate National Poetry Month.
Podcast a poem
Submit a poem for publication
Add a poem to the poet's tree
- A division of a poem created by arranging the lines into a unit, often repeated in the same pattern of
meter and rhyme throughout the poem; a unit of poetic lines (a “paragraph” within the poem). The
stanzas within a poem are separated by blank lines.
Stanzas in modern poetry, such as free verse, often do not have lines that are all of the same length and
meter, nor even the same number of lines in each stanza. Stanzas created by such irregular line groupings
are often dictated by meaning, as in paragraphs of prose.
Line The line is fundamental to the perception of poetry, marking an important visual distinction from
prose. Poetry is arranged into a series of units that do not necessarily correspond to sentences, but
rather to a series of metrical feet. Generally, but not always, the line is printed as one single line on the
page. If it occupies more than one line, its remainder is usually indented to indicate that it is a continuation.
There is a natural tendency when reading poetry to pause at the end of a line, but the careful reader will
follow the punctuation to find where natural pauses should occur.
In traditional verse forms, the length of each line is determined by convention, but in modern poetry
the poet has more latitude for choice.
Couplet
Point of view/Voice: The author’s point of view concentrates on the vantage point of the speaker, or “teller” of
the story or poem. This may be considered the poem’s “voice” — the pervasive presence behind the
overall work. This is also sometimes referred to as the persona.
• 1st Person: the speaker is a character in the story or poem and tells it from his/her
perspective (uses “I”).
• 3rd Person limited: the speaker is not part of the story, but tells about the other characters
through the limited perceptions of one other person.
• 3rd Person omniscient: the speaker is not part of the story, but is able to “know” and
describe what all characters are thinking.
Line: The line is fundamental to the perception of poetry,
Meter
Free Vese: Lines with no prescribed pattern or structure — the poet determines all the variables
as seems appropriate for each poem
Onomatopoeia
Imagery: The use of vivid language to generate ideas and/or evoke mental images, not only of the visual
sense, but of sensation and emotion as well. While most commonly used in reference to figurative
language, imagery can apply to any component of a poem that evoke sensory experience and emotional
response, and also applies to the concrete things so brought to mind.
Poetry works it magic by the way it uses words to evoke “images” that carry depths of meaning.
The poet’s carefully described impressions of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch can be transferred to
the thoughtful reader through imaginative use and combinations of diction. In addition to its more
tangible initial impact, effective imagery has the potential to tap the inner wisdom of the reader to
arouse meditative and inspirational responses.
Related images are often clustered or scattered throughout a work, thus serving to create a particular
mood or tone. Images of disease, corruption, and death, for example, are recurrent patterns shaping our
perceptions of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Examples:
• Sight: Smoke mysteriously puffed out from the clown’s ears.
• Sound: Tom placed his ear tightly against the wall; he could hear a faint but distinct thump
thump thump.
• Touch: The burlap wall covering scraped against the little boy’s cheek.
• Taste: A salty tear ran across onto her lips.
• Smell: Cinnamon! That’s what wafted into his nostrils.
Consonance: Repeated consonant sounds at the ending of words placed near each other, usually on the
same or adjacent lines. These should be in sounds that are accented, or stressed, rather than in vowel
–2–
sounds that are unaccented. This produces a pleasing kind of near-rhyme.
Example: boats into the past
Example: cool soul
Assonance: Repeated vowel sounds in words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent lines.
These should be in sounds that are accented, or stressed, rather than in vowel sounds that are unaccented.
Example: He’s a bruisin’ loser
In the second example above, the short A sound in Andrew, patted, and Ascot would be assonant.
Rhyme: This is the one device most commonly associated with poetry by the general public. Words that
have different beginning sounds but whose endings sound alike, including the final vowel sound and
everything following it, are said to rhyme.
Example: time, slime, mime
Double rhymes include the final two syllables. Example: revival, arrival, survival
Triple rhymes include the final three syllables. Example: greenery, machinery, scenery
A variation which has been used effectively is called slant rhyme, or half rhyme. If only the final
consonant sounds of the words are the same, but the initial consonants and the vowel sounds are
different, then the rhyme is called a slant rhyme or half rhyme. When this appears in the middle of lines
rather than at the end, it is called consonance.
Example: soul, oil, foul; taut, sat, knit
Another variation which is occasionally used is called near rhyme. If the final vowel sounds are the
–3–
same, but the final consonant sounds are slightly different, then the rhyme is called a near rhyme.
Example: fine, rhyme; poem, goin’
Less effective but sometimes used are sight rhymes. Words which are spelled the same (as if they
rhymed), but are pronounced differently are called sight rhymes or eye rhymes.
Example: enough, cough, through, bough
Rhye Scheme The pattern established by the arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or poem, generally
described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines, such as the
ababbcc of the Rhyme Royal stanza form.
Capital letters in the alphabetic rhyme scheme are used for the repeating lines of a refrain; the letters
x and y indicate unrhymed lines.
In quatrains, the popular rhyme scheme of abab is called alternate rhyme or cross rhyme. The abba
scheme is called envelope rhyme, and another one frequently used is xaxa (This last pattern, when
working with students, is generally easier for them to understand when presented as abcb, as they
associate matched letters with rhymed words).
Repetition: The purposeful re-use of words and phrases for an effect. Sometimes, especially with longer
phrases that contain a different key word each time, this is called parallelism. It has been a central part
of poetry in many cultures. Many of the Psalms use this device as one of their unifying elements.
Example: I was glad; so very, very glad.
Example: Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward…
…
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d…
Alliteration: Repeated consonant sounds at the beginning of words placed near each other, usually on the
same or adjacent lines. A somewhat looser definition is that it is the use of the same consonant in any
part of adjacent words.
Example: fast and furious
Example: Peter and Andrew patted the pony at Ascot
Metaphor: A direct comparison between two unlike things, stating that one is the other or does the action
of the other.
Example: He’s a zero. Example: Her fingers danced across the keyboard.
Simile
Personification: Attributing human characteristics to an inanimate object, animal, or abstract idea.
Example: The days crept by slowly, sorrowfully.
Tone: The means by which a poet reveals attitudes and feelings, in the style of language or expression
of thought used to develop the subject. Certain tones include not only irony and satire, but may be
loving, condescending, bitter, pitying, fanciful, solemn, and a host of other emotions and attitudes.
Tone can also refer to the overall mood of the poem itself, in the sense of a pervading atmosphere
intended to influence the readers’ emotional response and foster expectations of the conclusion.
Another use of tone is in reference to pitch or to the demeanor of a speaker as interpreted through
inflections of the voice; in poetry, this is conveyed through the use of connotation, diction, figures of
speech, rhythm and other elements of poetic construction.
Synesthesia: An attempt to fuse different senses by describing one kind of sense impression in words
normally used to describe another.
Example: The sound of her voice was sweet.
Example: a loud aroma, a velvety smile
Elegy
Epiphany
Limerick
Ode: any of several stanzaic forms more complex than the lyric, with intricate rhyme schemes and
irregular number of lines, generally of considerable length, always written in a style marked by a
rich, intense expression of an elevated thought praising a person or object. “Ode to a Nightingale”
is an example.
Sonnet: a fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter with a prescribed rhyme scheme; its subject
was traditionally love. Three variations are found frequently in English, although others are
occasionally seen.
• Shakespearean Sonnet: a style of sonnet used by Shakespeare with a rhyme scheme of abab
cdcd efef gg
• Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet: a form of sonnet made popular by Petrarch with a rhyme scheme of
abbaabba cdecde or cdcdcd
• Spenserian Sonnet: a variant of the Shakespearean form in which the quatrains are linked with a
chain or interlocked rhyme scheme, abab bcbc cdcd ee.
• Sonnet Sequence: a series of sonnets in which there is a discernable unifying theme, while each
retains its own structural independence. All of Shakespeare’s sonnets, for example, were part of a
sequence.